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When slow progress is made by children who are learning to read and write in their second or third language, it is often assumed that they simply have a language problem: if they knew the target language better, they would find it easier to learn to read. In this paper we argue that, while that is often true, there is a risk that learning difficulties associated with dyslexia will sometimes be overlooked. In support of this argument we present evidence that pupils from linguistic minority communities are under-represented in specialist teaching provision and show how traditional approaches to identifying dyslexia are likely to under-identify bilingual children with dyslexia. The article proposes how good practice may be developed in the assessment of dyslexia with bilingual children and highlights the value in this context of recent approaches to defining dyslexia which do not depend upon exclusionary criteria or an IQ-achievement discrepancy.
